RBTL Tours: A Dark Journey into the Light by Josef

A dark Journey into the light is an interesting and
thought provoking read for anyone who has questioned urges and desires familiar to us
all. I spent sixty years of my life

in “limbo” trying to understand what was
driving me to explore every fantasy I could find. We all enjoy sex but the book
provides interesting insights into the workings of the mind of a sex addict.
We are much more than what we feel, and less than what we think. This book
explores what is possible when we find balance between the two.

A Dark Journey into the Light was a lifetime in
the making and more than 2 years in the writing. One of the biggest issues in
life is sex and people usually make a choice. They either follow their desires,
or they don't. This book looks at the issues that arose, and the conflict of
emotions I had to deal with when I chose both, although it more correctly felt like
they chose me. Life became an
exercise in learning about myself by exploring what
"lies beneath" as it reared it’s head and found it’s way to the
surface. There was no way around the exploration because the battle for
supremacy raging between the two was inside me. What was the war all about and what
would become of me? This book is about my journey of continuing self-discovery as
I move through the mystery we call

life.

The book
is an autobiography so it's pretty much all
about me and who I am. I suppose there

are a few small things that aren't covered.
For instance, I like dogs and horses and I love gardening. I'm a country
boy and grew up with spiders and snakes, and although I'm not keen on
spiders if one crawls up my trouser leg they don't freak me out either. A snake up
the trouser leg though would be a

different story! Think “a hillbilly version
of River Dance.” I love long hikes over the mountains or across the plains.
Just as long as I'm walking somewhere, but at times I wonder if I'm just trying to
leave something behind.

A Dark Journey into the Light is an interesting
and thought provoking book for anyone who has ever questioned urges and desires
familiar to us all. It provides interesting insights into the workings of
the mind of a sex addict. We are much more than what we feel, and less than what
we think. This book explores the healing that is possible when we find
balance between the two.

This is the story of my life. It has not
been fabricated, exaggerated, or embellished in any way.
It’s the raw truth and I’m not really sure why I’m writing it, but my therapist
thinks it’s a good idea, and I can understand her reasoning about that.
Writing down my life’s story might simply be a part of the healing process, so I can
finally move on with my life and live it like a normal
person.

All my life I’ve wished for nothing more
than just to be normal, as I’ve looked around and envied
other people’s untroubled lives. At least that is how they appear on the
surface. We can all be quite certain that most people harbor some secrets in their
lives. Those secrets might be small things they regret or feel ashamed about. I
wish people did not need to have secrets and live in fear and guilt about
their lives, because most things people hide from are not worth the stress, but I
guess I’m the same.

Maybe I should be able to shout from the
rooftops, and tell the world I’m not afraid or ashamed of my
life, but in my heart I know many people will stand in judgment of me. At the
same time, I know deep down a lot of people would applaud my courage if I did
so, even if their own fears prevented them from supporting me publicly.
Therein lies the problem.

If you stand outside society’s norm you
stand alone, through social judgment and fear. Maybe I should
just include it all in the category of fear, and leave judgment out of it,
considering all judgment has its roots in fear.

Fear; the prime mover for almost every
expression in our lives. What would it be like to be free of
fear?

Everyone has their problems, and people go
through a great deal of pain and suffering. I personally
know people I would not trade places with for anything on earth. We are all
plagued by similar run-of-the-mill issues, such as marriage breakups,
financial problems, health issues, and

everything else that goes with living on
this planet, as we try to coexist with a whole lot of people. With most of them we
have almost nothing in common, except a pattern of similar reactions that
maintain a reasonable level of “sanity” in society. And it is all bound in
fear.

It doesn’t sound like much of a way to
live, but if you question people about their lives and
propose the idea that they are living in fear, almost all of them will disagree.
Some will even become angry, and

possibly violent, if you dare to start a
debate with them on the issue. The cruel irony is they won’t see, even then,
that their reaction to the idea of their lives being based on fear is in
itself a fear-based reaction.

So why don’t I tell people about my life?
Why don’t I stand up, step out of the shadows society creeps
around in, and put my trust in people to accept my
life?

Simple. People cannot be
trusted.

Everyone knows this because everyone has a
secret. The only variable is the size of the secret, and
mine would attract a massive excess baggage fee if I packed it in a suitcase
and boarded a plane.

I’ve experienced, or still do to some
degree, all those problems I spoke about: divorce, health,
finance, and so on. I’m not saying my life is difficult in the main, and in fact
I often count myself lucky, giving

thanks for my life and the many things I
enjoy, because unlike some others, at least I have my health. I can walk, talk,
eat, see, and hear. I also have a brain that works well enough, which gives
me the opportunity to make something of myself, and do something with my life. I
really cannot complain, so what makes my life so different my therapist
thinks it’s a good idea to write it down?

I don’t think the aspect of my life in
question is particularly unusual, or different, from
that of a large percentage of the population, so I guess it comes down to a
question of degree and scope. When I

consider those factors I can’t help feeling
my life has been a little unusual to say the least, and a lot unusual to “say
the most”.

There’s no doubt my life could, and would,
be summed up by a lot of people with words like sick,
deviant, gross, pathetic, abhorrent, disgusting, depraved, and so
on.

These words are not new to me. I’ve tarred
myself with every one of them over the years, and nobody else
could project the depth of feeling in them more strongly than I have against
myself. That projection evoked feelings of shame, guilt, unworthiness, and
self-loathing that cannot be imagined. Even if I told you it’s
impossible to imagine the things I’ve done, and then gave you a hint, you still would
not guess at the depth and breadth of my life
experience.

I’ve written about this in a way that tries
to depict how I felt at the time and how I feel now, and
can only use words or terms that make that possible. This book is not for the
prudish or faint-hearted, so if you like your reality painted over and
sugar-coated, then this is not for you, and I suggest you make a nice cup of tea and
watch re-runs of Days of Our Lives
instead.

I’m not complaining about my lot, and in
some strange way I have even come to appreciate it after all
this time. All I want now is to make some sense of it and possibly enrich the
remainder of my life, and maybe even help someone else with
theirs.

*

It all seemed to begin harmlessly enough as
a young child in primary school but when I was a young
teenager, an innocent conversation with my mother raised the idea in me that my
turbulent, obsessive journey had actually begun when I was just a baby. I
explore this in chapter 5.

In time I had no doubt about this, and it
often led me to wonder whether it was some kind of karmic
load I was unloading, or if I was building up a karmic load that would crush
the life out of my soul.

This question would plague me throughout
the decades to come, but whatever the explanation, I was
powerless to do anything about it.

All I could do was hang in, and hang on, as
I plunged headlong through a chaotic world of sensory
self-gratification.

Where do I even start to give someone an
idea of the duality of the life I have lived for as long as I
can remember? There is that old cliché about starting at the beginning, and
it may be right, but let’s just

skip ahead for a moment, because honestly,
if I’m going to write this down I don’t have time for norms or
clichés.

Skipping ahead will also give me a clear
reminder of why I’m writing this, and what I’m writing about.
I’ll come back later and try to join some dots to give a clearer picture of what
it always felt like to me: a life unlived. Is that too dramatic, to call it a
life unlived? I lived something, didn’t
I?

We all have some notion of what life should
be like, or what we wish it was like, but in my mind and
heart my life never measured up to any of my wishes. It just never felt like
living. It felt like I was trapped in some kind of time warp, or parallel
universe, where I could only watch my life happening around me as though it was
someone else’s. But it is what it is.